Insidious
by Lady-of-the-Refrigerator
Summary: Doubt is an insidious thing, he said. God, she would have preferred "I told you so." Post-The Cyprus Agency, Part 3 of 3
1. Chapter 1

AN: I'm slowly finishing up the plotbunnies that have kept me motivated/distracted while writing Whatever You Need. I've spent the last few days working on polishing up this one. It takes place after The Cyprus Agency and it'll earn its rating in the second chapter, I'm afraid. :P

* * *

"Doubt is an insidious thing, isn't it?" he said, staring unblinkingly into the flickering, crackling fire. He swirled the Scotch in his glass and took a slow sip.

Red hadn't spoken for such a long time after she joined him there on the couch in front of the fireplace, she had begun to wonder if he ever would, or if he was just going to let her sit next to him in silence and soak up the warmth from the fire and from him.

_Doubt is an insidious thing_, he said. It took every last ounce of self-control she possessed not to haul back and slap him for being so blasé about her decision. He knew how much she struggled to get to this point. God, she would have preferred _I told you so_. She would have said as much if he wasn't acting so strangely.

The push and pull of Red's behavior towards her since Garrick's attack was giving her whiplash—he'd be warm and relaxed one minute and distant and detached the next. She was guilty of doing the same thing herself, she knew—whenever she suffered a trauma, she closed herself off from everyone and dealt with it alone. For someone like Red, it must be even more isolating. That, at least, she understood.

She wasn't able to seek comfort from Tom after a loss and, truth be told, she wouldn't really want to even if she could. Despite her better judgment, she'd come to expect that sort of comfort from Red, because there was something about his concern that felt genuine where Tom's did not. She always got the feeling Tom was going through the motions when he checked in with her, fulfilling his obligation as a dutiful spouse; he never seemed too disappointed when she pushed him away and let him off the hook. Perhaps that was one of the reasons she came here tonight, instead of going after Tom when he walked out.

She'd grown accustomed to a certain closeness meeting with Red in his sanctuary the past few weeks, speaking in low, hushed voices with their heads ducked near enough to hear each other, sitting just about as close as they could without touching outright. She needed that closeness now more than ever. The fact that he didn't seem willing to give it left her wanting.

His body language was strange tonight, less polished and assertive, more edgy and defensive. He seemed a lot like she felt—wired and drained at the same time. She couldn't imagine why. He'd been happy when he left her, or at least cheerful, upbeat, with a spring in his step and perhaps a little mescaline in his system. What possibly could have happened to change his mood so drastically?

He still hadn't turned to look at her, hadn't given her a sidelong glance, nothing. That was perhaps the only thing about him that felt normal. It was fast becoming a frustrating habit of his in moments like this.

Once he turned away from her to admire the view from the sofa in Frederick's house after he handed her that old mason jar of milky liquor, he never so much as glanced back in her direction. She'd been glad for it then; her finger had brushed his thumb on the jar when she took it from him and it prickled like it meant something. She had enough on her plate that day already without having to deal with the knowing look in Red's eye that was sure to be there.

He didn't look at her in the park after she found the photo of Tom among Gina's things, not when she searched his face with tears in her eyes, silently begging for the connection, not when he told her she could trust him, not even when he took her hand.

Tonight, his tendency was even more evident than it had been in the past. It wasn't that he didn't make eye contact that bothered her, it was that he _wouldn't_, that he made a conscious effort to avoid it. She wanted to scream at him to look at her, grab him by the face and make him. He'd driven her to this point, planted the seed of uncertainty in her mind and tended it until it took root. The least he could do was look her in the eye when her life caved in around her.

_Doubt is an insidious thing, isn't it?_ What an infuriatingly accurate statement that was. Doubt tainted every interaction, colored every discussion she had with Tom. He was her husband—_her husband_—and every passing day she could feel them drifting further and further apart as she slowly built a wall between them brick by brick, Red's voice an insistent itch at the back of her skull. _Be careful of your husband_.

Between Tom and the baby and seeing all those poor girls used as living incubators for one man's twisted legacy, she felt like she was teetering on the edge of the wall she'd built and if someone even breathed on her the wrong way, she'd falter and fall. She wasn't sure what awaited her at the bottom, but she'd be damned if she let herself go down alone.

"Why don't you ever look at me when I come to you like this?" she asked, desperate for Red to acknowledge her presence with something more than a bon mot she could have found in one of the fortune cookies she had piling up in a jar in her cabinet.

At last he turned to face her; she sucked in a wincing breath, barely restraining a visible flinch. The mask he usually wore had disappeared completely and raw, undisguised heartache emanated from him in waves. _Be careful what you wish for_, she thought, feeling slightly queasy.

She couldn't imagine his demeanor had anything to do with her choice to call off the adoption, not when he pushed her so hard in that direction in the first place. Her entire world had fallen apart since that afternoon. Why did it look like his had as well?

"What is it? What's wrong?"

She didn't expect an answer—he only ever told her the bare minimum of what she needed to know, leaving her to figure out the rest for herself, if at all—so she was surprised when for once he didn't try to deflect, to turn the question back around to her.

"I had an opportunity tonight,"—he spoke haltingly, as if he was deciding again after every word if he was going to say anything more—"to find out the truth about what happened to my family. I didn't take it."

Bile rose in the back of her throat. "You don't know what happened to them?" she asked, searching his face for some small sign that she'd missed something, misunderstood him somehow.

After a tense moment, he gave a short, stiff shake of his head.

Her stomach dropped. It never, not _once_, occurred to her that he might not know what happened to his family. Everything in his file was so matter of fact about the whole ordeal, it didn't leave room for interpretation or give any indication there was more to the story than meets the eye. She even used what she thought was his callous abandonment of his wife and daughter as a weapon against him when he hit too close to the mark about her longing for a child.

That felt like a lifetime ago.

He'd been a stranger then, a composite sketch of a monster pasted together from grainy surveillance photos, a list of crimes, and a number four stamped next to his name. Now that she knew more of the man behind the dossier, a man who willingly turned himself over to be tortured and likely killed in her place, she knew he was not the type of man to walk out on his family. Not at Christmas. Not ever.

Not willingly.

She always assumed he was being cagey with his half-truths and cryptic insinuations, that in the giant, crazy game of chess they were playing, he knew every correct move and precisely when to make them. She believed he already had all the answers and was simply choosing not to tell her until the opportune moment.

If that wasn't the case, if he could be in the dark about something as important as the fate of his own family, he could be in the dark about other things, too. It suddenly became a possibility that he was just as lost as she was in this mess. Maybe he knew the broad strokes better than she did, but some details were, perhaps, still a mystery to him.

"Can't you go back and—"

"No," he interrupted, his voice firm. "That avenue is closed."

The casual finality of his tone made her cringe inwardly, his safe, inoffensive words meaning he'd killed someone tonight. Her stomach sank further.

"Was it the mole?" she asked. She hoped it was.

He hesitated a moment before nodding, staring down into his empty glass. He leaned forward to pour himself another Scotch and his shoulder brushed hers when he settled back into the couch. He held himself very still, seeming to wait for her to shift away to regain the space she'd lost, but she found herself doing the opposite, relaxing into the cushions in a way that pressed her even closer to him. He made an abortive move towards his mouth with the tumbler before thinking better of it and offering the glass to her.

"You'll hear about it in the morning, I'm sure. Or perhaps later. Mr. Kaplan is thorough."

"So it's over?"

When he met her gaze again, she felt the intensity of it like a vise around her heart. She raised the glass to her mouth, the warmth from the alcohol giving her something to focus on other than how haunted his eyes looked.

"It's never over," he said. "But, yes. As far as the Garrick situation is concerned, it's over. The final mole is dead."

"Good."

Her vehemence broke through his despair for a moment and she could make out the tiniest hint of amusement in his eyes. "I don't think I've ever had your approval for executing someone before."

"This is different."

"Different how?"

"They could have gotten you killed."

The mole had gotten others killed, of course—Luli, some of Liz's fellow agents… Both Ressler and Dembe barely escaped with their lives. It wasn't as if she didn't care about them. She cared a great deal, in fact. But she cared about Red in a different way. She felt that his death would have left a hole in her life she wouldn't know how to fill. She couldn't define the space he occupied in her head and in her heart as it was. If she lost him before she even got the chance to try…

"I think if I had been there, I might have done it myself," she said in a rush, surprising herself with the conviction she felt. She took a gulp of Scotch and choked as it burned its way down her throat.

"That's very bloodthirsty of you," he said, keeping his eyes on her as he took the glass and refilled it again.

"I'm not myself tonight."—her brow furrowed; that didn't quite ring true—"Or maybe I'm more myself." He studied her face, searching perhaps for the source of this newfound ruthlessness. He downed half of the glass himself before he handed it back.

They lapsed into silence again, passing the glass back and forth. Her skin still prickled whenever she brushed against his fingers and it still felt like it meant something. She slid the tumbler from his grasp and drained it, but instead of giving it back, she took his now empty hand in hers.

"I heard you searched for me," he said after a while. "At great personal risk. It endeared you to a good number of my people, you know. They no longer think of you as 'that rookie fed crazy old Reddington wants us to risk our lives for' anymore. They think I've collected you like I collected them, that you're just as much a part of my ragtag network of allies as they are now. Have I collected you, Lizzy? Have I done something to earn your loyalty?"

"I couldn't live with myself if you died because of me."

He squeezed her hand, lips twitching into a tiny smile. "And you say we have nothing in common."

Her answering laugh died in her throat and she dug an eyetooth into her tongue to stave off a sudden onslaught of tears. She gave a deep, shuddering sigh and leaned into his shoulder.

"For the record…" He paused to clear his throat, but his voice was still thick with emotion when he continued. "I don't usually look at you when you come to me because if I see the pain that bastard has caused you in your eyes, I want to do whatever I can to take it away."

"That doesn't sound like such a bad thing."

"I'm not sure you realize what I'm implying."

"I'm not stupid, Red." The way she saw it, he was either implying he'd like to take Tom out of the picture or… something else. It was the thought of _something else_ that sent a shiver down her spine, and it was not at all unpleasant.

He, however, seemed hung up on thinking she'd misunderstood his intentions.

"Of course you're not stupid, Lizzy, but a couple months ago you asked me if I was your father and if that's the box you've put me in, you're really not going to understand what I'm offering here."

"I didn't think it was a real possibility. It's just… I had no other point of reference for what you did with Garrick. The only person in my life who ever put my well-being one hundred percent first was Sam and even he wasn't as present as he could have been all the time.

"I'm not the kind of person people put themselves in harm's way for, especially if they have no obligation to do so. I didn't know what to think."

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She found herself swiftly approaching yet another turning point, only this one she thought she might just be willing to cross. "I was relieved you didn't say yes. When you hesitated, I thought I'd be sick."

"And why is that?"

"Because,"—she turned to face him fully, tucking a leg under her, and braced an arm along the back of the couch near his shoulders, her fingers skimming the back of his neck—"the more I think about it, the more I'd like to help you the way you'd like to help me."


	2. Chapter 2

AN: Sorry this took so long to update. I got stuck, then I got sick, then it got just a tiny bit away from me. There's one more chapter after this that's almost finished. I hope to get it up before Monday night, if all goes well.

* * *

_"I was relieved you didn't say yes. When you hesitated, I thought I'd be sick." _

_"And why is that?"_

_"Because,"—she turned to face him fully, tucking a leg under her, and braced an arm along the back of the couch near his shoulders, her fingers skimming the back of his neck—"the more I think about it, the more I'd like to help you the way you'd like to help me."_

* * *

Many things in life were just as insidious as doubt. Liz had learned that the hard way. Anger certainly qualified. Fear as well. Resentment. Grief. Longing.

_Lust_.

Attraction could be like a fuse, burning quickly or slowly, but liable to set off a chain reaction that culminated in a conflagration when it reached its end. The fuse between her and Red was a slow-burning one, lit that very first day she sat down across from him outside the box. Tonight, as she knelt next to him on the sofa and he stared up at her with anticipation plain on his face, she felt the impending detonation loom large ahead of them.

"What about your husband?" Red asked, saying the last two words with such derision she had to fight against the ingrained urge to defend Tom; he was far from her favorite person at the moment, but she still had no concrete evidence he was guilty of anything more than putting unreasonable pressure on her about the adoption.

About her job.

About moving.

And he'd been more than a little strange when the surveillance van was outside their home for someone who'd nearly been killed by a violent intruder so recently. _Hmm_. She filed that train of thought away for future contemplation.

"I can't imagine you care about me being faithful to Tom."

"Oh, not at all, but I can already sense a crisis of conscience brewing on the horizon and I won't ruin our working relationship because you've stubbornly decided to patch things up with him again."

She didn't want to patch things up. She might have a month ago, maybe, or two months ago, before Garrick. But facing the prospect of Red disappearing from her life as quickly as he appeared put things into perspective for her.

While he was gone, she thought about him to distraction, worried about him, found herself at a loss without a phone call or a meeting in a quirky hideaway to look forward to. Tom's incessant pestering about leaving DC made her that much more desperate to stay, because leaving DC felt like leaving Red, even when he wasn't there. She had grown attached to him in a way that made fixing things with Tom now that she finally found the courage to put her foot down less than appealing. She wasn't quite ready to examine why that was the case, but the shadows of those unexamined reasons were enough for now.

"I told him we were broken. I meant it."

Red let out a breath as his eyes slid shut and his jaw clenched. "Broken," he repeated. She could see his Adam's apple bob in his throat as he swallowed and there was a faint dusting of stubble along his jaw, white and dark blond; she leaned in unconsciously for a closer look. The only other time he'd been anything but clean-shaven in her presence was when he saved her from The Stewmaker and she'd obviously had other things on her mind at the time.

"The truth is,"—she ran her hand up the back of his neck, his short hair a pleasant sort of bristle as she rubbed it against the grain—"I haven't been faithful to Tom in a very long time. I've dug in my heels, fought it tooth and nail, denied it to myself every step of the way, but in the end, between Tom and you, I've always chosen you. Every single time."

He made a noise in the back of his throat and leaned into her caress, following the progress of her fingernails as she drew them lightly over his scalp in abstract patterns. The way he moved with her, she half-expected him to start to purr.

Red used his physicality in very specific ways—to intimidate, to command more attention than a man of his stature usually would, to project a kind of confidence she only dreamed of possessing. He used touch in similar ways, in addition to being a hell of a lot more physically affectionate than she would have guessed from reading his file alone. She didn't have many opportunities to observe how he reacted to being touched, rather than being the one who initiated the touching. It was, she thought, something fascinating to behold. He seemed almost starved for the contact.

"I'm surprised he hasn't already accused me of having an affair. It's not like he hasn't noticed how distant I've been."

"That'll probably be his next tactic, now that the adoption scheme fell through."

"It wasn't a scheme," she said, perhaps too quickly.

"You don't sound nearly as sure about that as you should be. Has Tom started to give you reasons to doubt his motives, his… integrity?" He eyed her appraisingly, head tilted to one side. "Tell me, why were you so set on adopting in the first place?"

Liz flinched back away from him, could tell in an instant the direction the conversation was heading. "_Red_," she said, warning clear in her voice, but he continued as if she hadn't spoken at all.

"Was your experience so positive that you wanted to offer the same to a child, or was there something more to it?"

"Don't—"

"Do you think Tom would have pushed so hard for the adoption if he could have perhaps… orchestrated an accidental birth control failure? Ensured you were tied to a desk for nine months and to him for eighteen years? Or was that not a viable option?"

"Stop," she said, her throat tightening; she felt herself flush from alcohol, anger, and shame. She didn't want to talk about this now, didn't want to think about it, didn't want to consider the possibility that Red might have hit upon something with a glimmer of truth to it. "Isn't it enough that I'm here with you tonight?"

"Not if you go running back into his arms come morning, guilty and contrite, as if you're the one who betrayed him."

"Why don't you just tell me what you think he's done and get it over with?"

"You have nothing to be ashamed of, Lizzy," he said, pointedly ignoring her question. "And it's certainly not a sign that you're unsuited to being a mother."

"_Hey_,"—she dug her fingers into his neck and he winced, trying to twist away from the pressure and pain, but she held fast—"I told you to stop. I didn't come here to be psychoanalyzed and I sure as hell didn't come to have you mock my inability to—"

"Why are you here?" he interrupted with an urgency that took her by surprise.

"Excuse me?"

"Why did you come here? You must have known I wouldn't just sit back and commiserate with you over how much of an insensitive ass your husband is and leave it at that. You could have turned to Donald or Meera if that's what you wanted, but you turned to me. Why?"

"Oh, for the love of—Do you really not know or do you just get off on hearing me say it?" she asked. He looked up at her with that pseudo-innocent smile she knew so infuriatingly well, but his eyes betrayed his interest, his curiosity. "I came because the only time I don't feel alone is when I'm with you. Does that make you happy?"

His brows furrowed and he sighed heavily, hanging his head like he finally had confirmation of something he long suspected. His movement pulled him free of her bruising grip and she let him go, fascinated by the way he seemed to be collapsing in on himself. She followed his movement, slumping down onto the couch, sitting on her legs; she rested her forehead against the side of his head.

"It doesn't make me happy, Lizzy, it makes me…" He trailed off, jaw working awkwardly as he struggled for words. "The feeling is mutual," he said at last.

They lapsed into silence, the air suddenly heavy and hot and difficult to breath. She couldn't help remembering the conversation they'd had in his car after the narrow escape from Wujing's bunker, when she had still been horrified not only by how easily he killed, but by the incontrovertible proof that he was willing to do so to protect her.

She'd been desperate to reject any similarities between them and tried to wound him with his isolation all the while denying her own. The thought of it left her with a dull ache in her chest, because in the course of a few short months, she'd come to realize they might be just as alike as he insisted they were. Perhaps more so. After all, she was pretty sure she would kill to protect him now.

"I wasn't mocking you before," he said quietly after a while, obviously still troubled by the accusation. "And I didn't… Rest assured, it was only an educated guess. Your marriage may be broken, but you… you are not. You're the strongest person I know."

She pulled back to search his face so she could gauge just how much he was exaggerating. The idea that a man like Red, who had seen humanity's highest highs and lowest lows, could view her of all people as some sort of paragon of strength was mind-boggling, yet he seemed deadly serious.

"I'm bound to disappoint you if you put me on a pedestal like that," she said with a frown. "You're going to be in for a hell of a rude awakening when I fall."

"_If_ you fall," he said, "I'll be there to catch you."

"Red, you…" She felt a bizarre need to laugh and cry at the same time and blinked rapidly to clear her eyes. "You can't say things like that. I… It's too…"

"Cheesy? Clichéd?" His lips twitched into a self-deprecating little smile. "What can I say? You bring out a side of me I thought I killed a long time ago."

A twinge of remorse rippled through her as he rubbed absently at his sore neck.

"I'm sorry I hurt you."

"Don't be," he said, his voice low and hypnotic. "At least this time it wasn't life-threatening."

She reached out for his neck all the same, hoping to soothe where she'd gripped him so hard, but his hand was still there. The familiar prickle of awareness shot through her like a jolt and all of a sudden the charged atmosphere between them crackled and snapped, the invisible barrier broken. She felt his gaze drop to her mouth as if he touched her there. Little by little, they leaned closer to each other until his warm breath tickled her skin.

"Kiss me," he whispered. She watched his pupils dilate as she ran her tongue out to moisten her lips and she was struck with the sudden realization that if he hadn't been at risk of imminent death the last time she'd taken her anger out on his neck, he might have liked to kiss her then, too.

He tried to close the final bit of distance between them, but she evaded him at the last second to give herself a few more moments to process what was happening; she pressed her lips to the stubbled skin just below his jaw, leaving an open-mouthed kiss there.

"Not exactly what I meant, but we can work with that," he said, his voice rumbling with barely contained amusement. He tilted his head back to give her more room; she smiled against him and kissed her way up his neck.

She tugged at his tie to loosen it, flicked open enough buttons for her to slide her hand inside his shirt and settle over his heart, feeling it pound under her hand. He was as effected by her as she was by him. It was reassuring, in a way. It meant that passion could exist for her outside of her marriage and she shouldn't feel the need to cling to the shattered remnants of a failed relationship because it was familiar and dependable, because it was _there_.

She dragged her nails roughly across a nipple and his breath caught, his hips shifting involuntarily. His hands balled into fists against his own thighs and he made no move to reach out for her.

"You're allowed to touch me," she whispered into his ear. "It's not as if you've ever asked permission before."

She expected a hand at her cheek or the back of her head, expected him to pull her back into range for a proper kiss. She let out a surprised yelp when he reached for her hips instead and dragged her into his lap. Once she adjusted herself to straddle him comfortably, he pushed up the hem of her shirt, splaying his hands just above her trousers. His skin was both rougher and softer against her waist than she anticipated; the man was a study in contradictions even in this.

He trailed his hands around to her belly, firm enough not to tickle, and toyed with the bottom button of her blouse for a moment before slipping it free and slowly working his way up to unbutton the rest. She followed suit, picking up where she left off before, and unbuttoned his shirt and vest to the waist.

"Did it ever occur to you that you wear too many clothes?" she asked, struggling to free one of his hands from his cuff while the other rested warmly on her torso. He chuckled and skimmed his thumb under the edge of her bra; a shiver ran through her. "You could help, you know."

"Ah, but it's so much more rewarding to watch."

She gave him a sharp pinch to the forearm and he held his hands up in surrender. She had to admit it was rather rewarding to watch him undo his own cuffs and tug his shirttails out from his trousers, to see him slowly dismantle the armor of sophistication and class that separated him from the rank and file. She figured it would be just as rewarding to watch him dress himself as well, but undressing scratched a more pressing itch.

She pushed his shirt off his arms, smoothed her hands over the freckled skin of his shoulders and neck, and traced the muscles and tendons below his skin and the scars marring its surface. He had quite a collection of them. Large and small, raised and sunken, new and old, exposed and hidden by tattoos.

The small, roundish scar she was responsible for was still faintly pink, but it was overshadowed by the newest one a few inches away where they dug his chip out in a speeding ambulance. That one was ragged, irregular, and it hadn't quite fully healed yet, like it might have gotten infected when he'd gone to ground. She rubbed her thumb over it and bit her lip.

It was a stark reminder of his mortality and the risks he took everyday, doing what he did. She didn't like that scar. She didn't like remembering how even with a stranger prodding around in a hole in his neck, he'd been focused on helping her escape, that once her safety was on the line, his own was barely an afterthought.

"Lizzy…" He cupped her cheek and gently freed her lip from her teeth with his thumb. "I feel like I've lost you. Getting cold feet?"

She shook her head as emphatically as she could with his hand still at her cheek. "I need this. I need something reliable, concrete… something that feels real. I need to decompress. I think you do, too."


	3. Chapter 3

AN: Better late than never, I hope.

* * *

_"Lizzy…" He cupped her cheek and gently freed her lip from her teeth with his thumb. "I feel like I've lost you. Getting cold feet?"_

_She shook her head as emphatically as she could with his hand still at her cheek. "I need this. I need something reliable, concrete… something that feels real. I need to decompress. I think you do, too."_

* * *

He searched her face for a long moment, stroking his thumb over her lips. Just when she was sure he was about to lean forward and kiss her, he spoke.

"I do. I need this. But if you're going to regret it, I want no part of it. If I were a better man, I'd turn down what you're offering just to be sure, but I won't. Where were you just now? It seemed like you were miles away."

"It has nothing to do with Tom, I promise, just…" She trailed off, scrambling to come up with an excuse for her mental detour that wouldn't ruin the mood the way _I'm worried that one of these days you're going to get yourself killed_ might do. "Hitchhiking naked in the desert? Really?"

He snorted a laugh and then sighed, looking at her fondly with the ghost of a sad, wistful smile on his lips. He could tell she was deflecting, but apparently chose to believe her assurances that she wasn't having second thoughts. A moment of silent understanding passed between them and her lips twitched into a tiny, awkward smile in return.

"Did anyone ever pick you up?" she asked, tracing the lines of one of his tattoos, no doubt a faded souvenir from his Navy days.

"Eventually. A sad, naked man wandering around aimlessly with a driving need for tacos apparently doesn't ping everyone's 'might be an ax murderer' radar. Probably because there's nowhere to hide an ax."

"Is the high really worth the loss of control? I've never really understood the appeal."

He raised his eyebrows and shrugged. "I needed the distraction."

"From what?"

"Things weren't going my way," he said simply, rubbing a tendril of her hair between his fingers. While his words were evasive, they had a weight to them that felt oddly significant. He dropped his gaze to her lips again, but it felt a lot like it had earlier when he wouldn't meet her eyes, a purposeful avoidance.

"This was two years ago?" she asked, her mind struggling to remain present in the conversation; it was becoming more and more difficult to focus as he traced his hands over the skin between the unbuttoned sides of her shirt, starting at the hollow of her throat and moving slowly downward.

"Mmm-hmm." Smoothly, he unzipped her fly and slipped a hand into her pants.

"Tom and I got married two years a—_Jesus_," she gasped, clinging to his shoulders as he worked two fingers inside her and rubbed his thumb against her clit. "God, you have nice hands."

"I'm glad you think so," he said, his breathing almost as ragged as her own. She rocked against him, properly distracted now herself. She'd let him get away with diverting her attention from her questions for the time being as long as he kept doing what he was doing.

"Has your mind been in the gutter since this afternoon, Lizzy?" he asked, his voice pitched low, his cheek pressed to hers. His stubble scratched at her face as he spoke; that and the timbre of his voice had her hips moving more and more urgently against his hand. "Have you been picturing me naked, vulnerable, at your mercy?" He shifted his hips again, making sure she could feel how hard he was, and another wave of arousal crashed over her. "Have you ever imagined yourself taking control, having your way with me? I have."

All of a sudden, he pulled his hand away and leaned back into the sofa cushions, leaving her stranded on the edge of climax.

"Red, what are you—?"

"Go ahead," he said, spreading his arms in a perverse show of supplication. "Have your way with me."

"You bastard, do you have any idea how close I…" He looked up at her, a smug, self-satisfied smirk on his face. "You do. _Fuck_."

"That's definitely on the table. Or the couch, or the—" She interrupted him with a growl, laced their fingers together and pressed his hands against the back of the couch. Her mouth was near enough now to feel the humidity from his breath escaping from his parted lips and she could smell the lingering scent of the Scotch they'd drunk so long ago.

"Kiss me," he said again, lips brushing hers as he spoke, but this time he didn't try to close the minute distance between them; he waited for her to do it. He was lucky she had no interest in teasing him anymore, not after he wound her up like he had, because teasing him only tortured herself.

Liz hadn't felt the sweet anticipation of a first kiss in years. Tom had been forward enough with his advances that he kissed her before she really got the chance to build up any suspense. When she finally met Red's lips, she decided tonight more than made up for the recent drought.

Her stomach clenched as his mouth moved under hers, her hips rocking a few times of their own volition, seeking to relieve some of the newly insistent pleasure-pain building up inside her. He gasped into her mouth, his own hips moving in counterpoint. She brought her hands to his head so she could better direct the kiss, tilting her head and parting her lips. He deepened the kiss with a groan and ran his hands underneath her open shirt and around her back, pulling her more snugly against him before moving up to unclasp her bra.

Without warning, he tightened his arms around her and tipped them both to the side. Once they stretched out along the length of the couch, he knelt between her legs and helped her shrug out of her shirt and bra. As soon as her hands were free, she went to work on his belt.

"You are a terrible influence," he said, sucking in his stomach reflexively in response to the light, ticklish contact from her fingers as she undid his buckle.

"_I'm_ a terrible influence?" She spared a glance at his face as she slid the belt from its loops to find him staring down at her hungrily, only to curse under her breath and quickly refocus her attention on the task at hand. _Leave it to you to have pants with a button fly_, she thought.

"Someday we'll have to argue about who seduced whom tonight. Up." He coaxed her to lift her ass off the sofa so he could slide her pants and underwear off and gently guide her legs out of them.

She braced herself on her elbows and licked her lips in anticipation as he picked up where she left off with his own trousers; his hands froze with his fingers hitched around his waistband when he noticed. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath to steady himself.

"Don't give me any ideas," he snarled. She could see him twitch in his trousers despite himself.

She wrapped her legs around him, pulling him off balance, and he caught himself on his hands before he could land roughly against her. She shoved his trousers and boxers down his thighs as far as she could with her hands and then her feet before wrapping her legs around him again.

"Come on," she said, urging him on with a squeeze of her thighs.

He lowered himself to his elbows slowly and reached down, brows furrowing in concentration as he eased himself inside her, sweat beading and running down the side of his face. His rapid, shallow breathing looked almost pained. She rolled her hips, luxuriating in the feel of him, causing him to slide deeper with a groan she felt as much as she heard.

He was thicker than Tom and her nerve endings sang with each push and pull of his hips. The heat of so much of his bare skin against hers was both a shock and balm, overloading her senses and soothing them at the same time. He sought out her eyes, looking nearly as overwhelmed as she felt and more than a little lost.

"Lizzy?" he said, his voice halfway between confused reverence and a whine. She ran her thumb across his cheek with her own bemused, hysterical huff of laughter before she grabbed him by the neck and pulled him down to capture his lips in a frantic, hungry kiss.

She dug her fingernails into the skin of his shoulders and she vaguely registered that his sharp intake of breath and the warm, sticky feeling under her fingers must have meant she'd scratched deep enough to break the skin. It certainly didn't deter him in the slightest. He rolled his shoulders and moaned into her mouth.

Reaching for one of her legs, he coaxed it from his hip and hooked it over his elbow, pressing it back towards her body until the change in angle and pressure made her see stars. She tore her mouth away from his, lungs burning, and tried to bring her other leg up as far as she could. He quickly got the idea and helped her, holding himself still as he pressed it back like the first.

He met and held her gaze while he withdrew slowly and shoved forward again, establishing an ever-increasing pace that couldn't possibly last for either of them. Before long, his thrusts grew more and more erratic and forceful, driving her to new heights as he reached his peak; he buried his face in her neck and let out a guttural groan, pulsing inside her. The warm rush pushed her over the edge with him.

* * *

Liz blinked blearily, roused from her post-coital dozing by the sound of Red's voice.

"Wow. I don't mean to sound so surprised, but that was… _wow_."

She hummed her agreement and took mental inventory of herself. At some point in the aftermath, he must have pulled his heavy gray overcoat from where it was draped over the back of the sofa and arranged it over the two of them as well as he could. Neither of them seemed interested in moving any further than necessary. She felt like she was boneless, almost floating, and was utterly, utterly relaxed.

He pushed himself up high enough on shaky arms to meet her eyes. "We should do that more often," he said, eager but drowsy. He let himself collapse next to her, an arm and a leg thrown casually across her body as he tucked himself between her and the back of the sofa.

"If it takes us hitting rock bottom to get to this point, I'm not sure it's a good idea."

"Maybe it can be our way of avoiding rock bottom. Everyone needs a hobby to help blow off steam at the end of a long, trying day. Last time I checked, you had _The Real Housewives_ and not much else."

He propped his head up on his elbow and began tracing his fingers over her skin, raising goosebumps as he went. She shivered despite the warmth from his body and his coat.

"Did you break into my Netflix account?"

"Like I said, everyone needs a hobby. By the way, you have to choose a password that's more difficult to guess than your dog's name."

"So let me get this straight… I'm _your_ hobby and sleeping with you should be mine? And somehow I'm the terrible influence."

"I can make it worth you while," he said, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.

They dissolved into a fit of uncontrollable giggling, giddy from their release, their mounting exhaustion, and the absurdity of their pillow talk. They laughed until their cheeks hurt and their stomach muscles felt weak, but they still couldn't stop for longer than a few seconds, another bout of laughter triggered whenever they met each other's eyes.

"All joking aside," he said, still struggling to get his facial muscles under control. "I feel lighter than I have in months." He bent forward and pressed a lingering kiss to her lips. "Thank you."

She had to admit he had a point. Here in the afterglow, things didn't feel quite so bleak for once, the path ahead wasn't so tangled and twisted. There was a decision she had to make and for once she felt like the right choice was clear.

"I'm going to leave him," she said, her voice thick with sleep. "I have to. Even if he's only guilty of pressuring me about the baby, it wouldn't be fair to stay, especially now. And if he's guilty of more, well… all the more reason to leave."

"You'll have to expect a long and messy divorce, Lizzy. He's not going to make it easy on you. He needs to keep you close."

"But you're not going to tell me why, are you?"

"I hope someday soon you'll be able to understand."

She searched his face for a long moment, but right now she couldn't find it in herself to press the issue. If he said the answers would come, they would come. And if they didn't come soon, she would just have to find a way to make them.

"You know, if it weren't for this case, I might have let him get to me. I was heading in that direction. Trapped with a child in an increasingly loveless, unhappy marriage… That's not how I envisioned my life. You helped me avoid that. I'd like to return the favor."

"And how do you propose to do that?"

"Let me help you find the truth you're searching for. And maybe that's already what we're doing and you just haven't said, or maybe I'm a diversion while you pursue it in the background, I don't know, but you've been at this for twenty years. Maybe a new pair of eyes is just what you need to see it through. You came to me and wanted us to be partners, Red. Let's be partners."

"That word has a multitude of meanings, Lizzy."

"I realize that." She reached out a hand to cup his cheek and traced his lips with her thumb. "You don't have to do this alone anymore if you don't want to."

The corner of his lip twitched into a hint of a smile under her thumb. He shifted suddenly, covering her body with his again, and framed her face with his hands.

"I would be a fool to turn down such a compelling offer," he said, before capturing her lips in a searing kiss.


End file.
